TxDOT sitting on money for Lajitas resort road

LAJITAS — The Lone-Star State Department of Transportation System is sitting on nearly $1.2 million in federal finances the state federal agency may never be able to spend, thanks to an allow from a congresswoman who wanted to assist a subscriber move a route through a golf game vacation spot he belonged to.

Former U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla steered the money from American Capital to Capital Of Texas in 2005 to travel a 1.2-mile stretch of main road that cuts directly through a privately owned boundary line town-turned-exclusive resort.

But the vacation spot went bankrupt and the "Lajitas Relief Route" earmark, buried in a monolithic main road disbursement bill, can't be used for anything else.

So, the route sits, still separating costly hotel suite from the resort's exuberant golf game course, its two eating houses and most other comforts offered at Lajitas, The Ultimate Hideout. The vacation spot sit downs on the western border of Brewster County, a bare portion of Occident Lone-Star State that includes Big Bend National Park and have 1.4 people for each of its 6,130 foursquare miles.

The proprietor of the resort, Sir Leslie Stephen Smith, donated $2,500 to Bonilla's campaigns, and Bonilla owned a rank in the vacation spot — valued as high as $75,000 — that its Web land site states is available lone to place owners. Bonilla, who was voted out of business office in 2006, have no place in Lajitas.

"The money could be returned to the federal pot ... or the new proprietors (of the resort) might desire to force for that (project)," said Mark Crews, a TxDOT functionary in Elevation Paso.

The federal allow doesn't have got got an termination day of the month and so far TxDOT functionaries have not announced programs to go back the money.

A telephone call to Smith's cell phone couldn't travel through. A phone call to his bankruptcy attorney, Mark Petrocchi, was not immediately returned.

Several efforts to attain Bonilla through his political campaign financial officer were unsuccessful.

The circumferential plan, proposed by Smith's vacation spot company, was initially portion of a $7 million undertaking to reconstruct 13 statute miles of aging highway. The other cost to travel the roadway from the centre of the resort, according to TxDOT, was supposed to be footed by the resort.

"They (Lajitas) were going to pay for it. Bonilla's allow was not even discussed," Crews said.

But then Bonilla worked the money for the resort's route undertaking into the federal main road disbursement bill.

When the trade drop apart on the resort's manner to bankruptcy, the money "that Bonilla was so generous in giving us" went into limbo, Crews said.

Crews said the circumferential project, which would now be respective million dollars to complete, could be revived if a new proprietor at Lajitas or even the county decided to fund it.

"We don't have got the agency or the inclination," said Val Beard, the county's top elective functionary for the last 15 years. "It's something between TxDOT and the resort."

Andrew Wheat, a research manager for the nonpartisan guard dog grouping Texans for Populace Justice, said that Bonilla distilled "all that's incorrect with American political relation into a simple anecdote."

"Every civics text edition in Lone-Star State should state the narrative of the congresswoman who services his large giver buddies by earmarking a million taxation dollars to pave one statute mile of a remote, desert resort for the rich," Wheat said.

Bonilla have had neckties to Ian Smith and his vacation spot since at least 2003. Ian Smith have also been a generous giver to Republican campaigners and commissions for respective years.

Since 1999, Ian Smith have donated more than than $300,000 to Republicans, according to Federal Soldier Election Committee records.

In 2005, Bonilla's American Dream political action committee spent more than than $17,000 at the vacation spot for a fundraiser, records show.

Smith bought the vacation spot at auction bridge in 2000 for about $4 million. At the time, the place had a little hotel and a nine-hole golf game course. He spent respective old age and 10s of billions of dollars to morph the arid spot of desert into a extravagance holiday spot with 92 hotel rooms, 10 condoes and programs for a master-planned public of vacation homes.

In July, the company filed for bankruptcy in federal court.

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Associated Press Writer Suzanne Gamboa in Washington, District of Columbia contributed to this report.